Event

Lac La Belle Concert

Influenced by early Americana, the music of Lac La Belle seamlessly blends history with the present, to create stories that capture the human experience. Lac La Belle offer it with expertise, via accordion, mandolin, banjo, ukulele, harmonizing vocals, and fingerpicking resonator guitar.

What sets this acoustic duo apart is their utilization of their varied experiences; Schillace has a separate career performing his instrumental guitar pieces, and he wrote the first academic work on the recordings of John Fahey. Knaggs has history with New Music compositions and improvisations, including her vocal work in Matthew Barney's film "River of Fundament". This with their separate experiences learning folk and blues in Appalachia, American roots binds the duo's compositions with a heavy thread.

With the release of their third album, "A Friend Too Long", (October 2014), Lac La Belle elaborate upon their cohesive duo, with the addition of upright bass, pump organ, piano, percussion and strings. Written in a secluded cabin in Michigan's upper peninsula, and recorded in their Detroit home during the snowiest winter on record, "A Friend Too Long" animates the lives of fictional characters grappling with the tensions between the urban and the rural, the individual and the community, economic decay and the land of plenty.

The group has completed six tours of the mid-west, south and east, and has completed two European tours in 2012, 2013, with a third slated for 2015. Their performance styles often including their arrangements of old time, 1920's western swing, Dixieland, folk and blues tunes.